The January 2012 Tutorial Discussion

[Gare]

Gare,...and appreciate how light impacts on every part.

Best regards

Hi Javier—

You see how you drew all those arrows to show points of illumination?

Wrong!

True=light can come from a source such as a lamp or a flashlight.

It is EQUALLY true that light comes from the atmosphere and from the surroundings. It is called "indirect illumination", it is almost EVERYWHERE you look, and unless you were gifted at birth with a Godlike understanding of how natural scenes are illuminated, I recommend that artists use a modeling program to let the program calcualte where light comes from, where it goes, and how light scatters in a scene.

Here is the same scene, same camera angle, and I have lit the scene with one bare lightbulb, above the box and a little in front of it.



Clearly, it's easy to see and calculate where the light comes from and what areas of the box are hidden in shadow.

But consider how ugly the picture is!

My point is that a scene we see in the real word is very, very, VERY visually complex. Surfaces can be rough, or smooth, or a combination, things like lamp shades are not transparent, but they do not block light either (translucence and occasionally subsurface scattering of light), add more than one light to a scene you imagine, and I promise you...you cannot attain accuracy from your mind alone. Our brains don't do that sort of calculating. The human mind is best at recognition of what we already see, and associations.

Example: "That cloud in the sky. It looks like a turtle." Recognition, and comparison.
Example: "That flower sort of looks like a trumpet." Association.

We don't do calculations very well. That is why we use computers to assist us in the mind-numbing calculations so we can be free to create.

We are good at comparison, and synthesizing images based on our impressions.

And a lot of times that is why I feel "photorealism" is a waste of a creative artist's mind.

If you want photorealism, and you want it quickly, take a photo!

When we literally interpret a scene by reproducing it, we give up part of the artist's spirit, who wants to be creative and modify, correct, enhance what we really see.

Does any of this make sense, and is it of use to you professionally?

—g